In person icon Social Reproduction and the Politics of Demographic Change

Abstract

The population question today is a diverse political problem, not only as one of overpopulation in urban centres and in the developing world, but also in terms of declining fertility and worsening dependency ratios in advanced liberal societies. The concern about population figures and population governance has been shown to underpin issues as diverse as care, environment, sustainable development, security, and the global economy. They are also fundamentally gendered questions of biological reproduction and social reproduction that affect women’s lives from birth to death, from the production of offspring to the care of the young and elderly. The panel brings together papers that examine the ways in which gender is present, performed, and exploited in the context of demographic politics today. The papers treat population as a gendered political question that results in a complex set of governmental techniques, practices and interventions in social reproduction.